Why the fascination with notorious celebrities?

In the past seven months 2.5 million people have signed up to follow Kim Kardashian’s tweets. Jon and Kate Gosselin are currently featured in hundreds of thousands of online articles. “Real Housewives” are the subject of conversation from coast-to-coast.

They’re the new Paris Hiltons – famous more for their exploits and vivid loves lives than their accomplishments. And while you may not personally know or care about them, a healthy chunk of America does. We’re a society that’s increasingly fixated on the personal lives of notorious celebrities.

Why?

If you agree that social shifts reflect changing social needs – society’s bottomless pit of interest in the drug problems, fashions, figures and love lives of celebrities must be satisfying a psychological need.

Indeed, they’re today’s version of the hometown “sluts” “drunks” and “bums” that were discussed at the local bar, in coffee clutches and on front porches of yesterdays small towns. And harsh at it seems, that hometown gossip was also serving a psychological purpose.

We gossip about and revel in the lives of others as a way to discuss and debate our values and monitor social norms and standards. What’s right, wrong, indecent, worth valuing and the consequences of our behaviors are all brought into crisper focus through the living metaphor of other people’s lives.

We gossip to create, reevaluate and enforce community values and to learn about life. And at a time when the ol’ standby “talking about the weather” has become a political debate – celebrity gossip is a neutral unifier and a way for us to connect to each other.

As our local communities have morphed into global ones, and with fewer neighbors knowing – let alone talking to each other – infamous celebrities have taken on grander proportions.

Our connection to each other in our geographic, non-virtual towns and cities has decreased, while our access to the lives of celebrities has increased. The folks who fill the real and virtual pages of People have become part of our “local” communities.

The needs fulfilled today by gossip about of Jamie Lynn Spears, for example, are the same ones satisfied by yesterday’s hometown hotties. They allow us to debate and monitor social norms and they give us something to talk about so that we can bond with each other.

Of course there’s a little shadenfreude in there too – delight in the misfortune of others as a way to elevate our lives by comparison. As in, if Lindsay Lohen has all that going for her and still can’t keep it together there’s no reason to be envious and I’m doing great.

Which leads us to wonder why so many people are clamoring to fill the hometown hottie role today – but that’s another blog.